The killing of twice-premier Benazir Bhutto last Thursday is being turned by the world media into a Pythagorean mystery, much to the sadistic pleasure of the Pakistani establishment, including coup leader-turned-president Gen. ( R ) Pervez Musharraf.

 As Pakistan presented the look of a ghost country, the guilt, shame and fear that was writ large on Musharraf’s face after Bhutto’s death when he addressed the nation on television to announce a three-day mourning make some things clear.

 The deadly cocktail of powerful groups who wanted Benazir Bhutto, 54, annihilated include serving and retired generals, present and past intelligence chiefs, international smugglers with billions of dollars in their coffers, son of at least one former military dictator, investigations by this correspondent reveals.

 All of these groups in Pakistan are closely allied with terrorist mastermind bin Laden—Al Qaeda and Pakistani establishment are two sides of the same coin.

 The same elements were responsible for the deaths of secular leaders from the renegade province of Baluchistan, former governor and chief minister Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti last year and former member of the provincial assembly and guerilla leader Mir Balaa’ch Marri last month.

 People who stand to gain from Bhutto’s death comprise Musharraf himself—though on the face of it, he unwillingly accepted a power-sharing formula handed to him from Washington-- , Intelligence Bureau chief Brig ( R ) Ejaz Shah, former Inter Services Intelligence chief Gen. ( R ) Hamid Gul [who blames Benazir Bhutto for not letting him become the army chief on U.S. bidding. Not many people know, Gul is Musharraf’s alter ego.], former member of national assembly Ejazul Haq, and international smuggler Daud Ebrahim.

 Unbeknownst to Bhutto, as her relationship with U.S administration officials warmed up, these dangerous players in Pakistan politics with whom bin Laden has solid ties with were closely following her moves. From her plane trip with Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad, the permanent U.S. representative to the United Nations, to Colorado to her phone talk with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just a week before her arrival in Karachi, she was on the radar of Pakistani intelligence and the terrorists alike.

 Pakistan has misled the world to believe it was incapable of arresting bin Laden and Taliba’an ruler Mullah Omar. But after Bhutto met Khalilzad, a Kakar tribesman originally from Afghanistan, Musharraf secretly met an Afghan tribesman from the Ghilzai tribe, Khalilzad’s chief nemesis, ousted Taliba’an "amir", one-eyed Mullah Omar in the garrison city of Quetta, bordering Afghanistan.

 "Musharraf met Mullah Omar before and after his visit to Saudi Arabia within less than three weeks," one senior official in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan said.

 It is not surprising the city where Bhutto died is the headquarters of Pakistan Army—the world’s fifth largest army, with nuclear arms. Soldiers of Pakistani army chant Allah O’ Akbar [Allah is the Greatest, which in other words means rule of Islam over the entire world] as part of their daily drill in Rawalpindi.

 Additionally, Rawalpindi has the dubious distinction of being the death place of civilian prime ministers ever since Pakistan’s controversial inception in August 1947. Prior to Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was gunned down at the same ground on Oct. 18, 1951, and not far away once stood the jail where her dad former Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged April 4, 1979.

 The city is also home to Ejazul Haq, son of General Ziaul Haq, who died in an air crash August 17, 1988 along with U.S. Ambassador Arnie Raphel.

 The Haqs have a pathological dislike of Bhuttos, though it was General Ziaul Haq who hanged Bhutto’s father—when asked why he had to kill Bhutto, the late general responded, "There was one grave and two people, myself and Bhutto. So I sent Bhutto in it."

 Many in Pakistan suspect Ejazul Haq might have had a hand in Benazir’s Bhutto’s killing.

 Pakistani officials floated the name of Baitullah Mehsud, founder of an obscure Tehrik-i-Taliba’an; interestingly one of Mehsud’s spokesmen called foreign news services from Waziristan, to deny the Pakistani claim.

 Blatant lying is not uncommon in Pakistan and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has correctly pointed out the Musharraf regime can not be trusted.

 Musharraf’ has repeatedly lied that Daud Ebrahim—the street goon from Mumbai, who rose to become a mafia don in the smugglers’ paradise of Dubai-- is not in Pakistan. Ebrahim was responsible for the killing of 250 people in Mumbai on March 12, 1993 in retribution for Hindu extremists taking over Babri Mosque. But this correspondent saw Ebrahim at a party in Karachi, where plainclothesmen of the intelligence services had blocked off all roads as a security measure.

 Musharraf and Ejaz Shah did not provide Bhutto even half of the security that Pakistan provides to Ebrahim, bin Laden and Mullah Omar.

 While in Dubai in the late 80s and early 90s, Ebrahim and bin Laden had maintained extensive contacts as both were one the multi-millionaires club-- one was in smuggling and the other in real estate. Today, both are in Pakistan and Ebrahim’s men’s appear to be looking after bin Laden’s business interests in smuggling and havala business: an international racket of transferring funds from one country to another, without official interception.

 Pakistani public and Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party continue to suspect Musharraf is directly involved.

 A report in the New York Sun hinted at the involvement of the commando group called Special Services Group that was headed by Musharraf for many years before he became the army chief.

 But most importantly, the name that Benazir Bhutto herself clearly mentioned to Musharraf before her arrival in Pakistan was that of Ejaz Shah, director of the country’s Intelligence Bureau.

 Ejaz Shah was the man who "handled" bin Laden for nearly two decades both in his present position and his previous postings in the Pakistani intelligence.

 He was sure to lose his job had Benazir Bhutto been alive and elected as prime minister of Pakistan.

 Shah, a retired brigadier of the Pakistan army, is the same man who sheltered Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh, the mastermind behind the gruesome slaying of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, as an FBI hunt was on for Pearl’s abductors. A Musharraf protégé to this day, Shah was in charge of ISI operations in Kashmir.

 At the time of Daniel Pearl’s slaying, Shah was the home secretary—the top law official-- of Pakistan’s most populous Punjab province.

 Simultaneously with Pearl’s abduction, the ISI kidnapped TIME correspondent Ghulam Hasnain—for his expose on Daud Ebrahim’s lavish lifestyle in the investigative monthly Newsline. The link between the two abductions incredibly escaped media attention.

 Hasnain was badly tortured during his abduction, and arrived in the U.S. to seek asylum but later returned to Pakistan to continue with his professional life.

 However, Musharraf blamed Pearl for inviting his own death.

 Over the years, Ejaz Shah has wriggled his way up, closely working with Al Qaeda in its international jihadi operations. As part of his job, Shah is believed to be in regular contact with bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Daud Ebrahim.

 Bin Laden’s personal dislike for Benazir Bhutto is an open secret. The terrorist mastermind is said to have offered huge sums of money to Pakistani legislators to oust Bhutto through a vote of no-confidence as early as her first term as elected prime minister of Pakistan (1988-90).

 "Bin laden operatives approached us with bag-loads of money," recalls Mir Hasil Bizenjo, secretary general of the National Party, who was then a member of the National Assembly.